Monday, 8 August 2016

African Music Show #3: East and southern Africa

Time for another dig into the archives of
Australia’s pioneering African Music Show,
aired on 16th May 1984, and weaving networks that only the future might
see. This was the time before African
music hit mainstream Western ears, this was before Youssou N'Dour’s Immigres was released, even two years
before Paul Simon’s Graceland album. Granted, it was a little while after King Sunny
Ade’s “Juju Music” had already made
waves with Island Records.

African musicians were moving though, and
it was radio shows such as this one that helped shine spotlights into new
territories. In this two-hour show Tony Hunter and Geoff King talk about and
play music coming out of the Nairobi Hub of Congolese music in the early 1980s.
They chat about London beginning to notice African music, and wonder if the
African “hub” might shift from Paris to London.
The second half of the show heads south, skipping via Zimbabwean Rhumba,
through Thomas Mapfumo, to end with a few different styles from South Africa at
the time, including “The Call is Heard”
from Amandla – The ANC’s Cultural Group in exile.

It was at this time in London, thirty
two years ago, that Jumbo Van Renen was breaking ground with the Earthworks
record label he founded in 1983. In his book “Sounds Like London: 100 Years of
Black Music in the Capital”, Lloyd Bradley describes Jumbo as “ a perpetually
genial South African and lover of music from all over that continent, who
arrived in London at the start of the 1980s.” Jumbo actually arrived in London in 1972 and worked as A&R for Virgin and Frontline records, landing the likes of Dudu Pukwana and the Spears, Jabula, Orchestra Makassy, Orchestra Super Mazembe, as well as working with reggae bands, The Gladiators, The Twinkle Brothers and I-Roy, amongst others.

Already, new webs were spinning to new worlds. Tony
Hunter arrives in London towards the end of 1983 and meets Jumbo, and of
course buys a pile of records. Jumbo had just released Thomas Mapfumo’s “Ndangariro” on the Earthworks label. The
music press were warming up. Jumbo was

“working the connections”. Tony wrote an
article on “Chimurenga and Mapfumo’s music” for the very influential Black Music and Jazz Review Magazine (edited by Chris May).

Lloyd Bradley describes a growing London vibe oozing with confidence from the hip pan-African
Limpopo Lounge (at the Africa Centre), “it was hardly going to take a series of
marketing meetings to work out that African could be ‘the new black’. So to
speak.”

Two of the tracks featured on this radio
show come off those Earthworks albums
Tony bought from Jumbo, hot off the press at the time: Thomas Mapfumo’s “Ndangariro” and Orchestra Super Mazembe’s
big hit “Shauriyako” (your problem).

If you have somewhere to drive why not tune
your car radio back thirty two years and be curious to find of an Australian
radio show showcasing African music hits from the early 80s?